Metaphors in restorative justice practices: The construction of future memories

Abstract

Initiatives in restorative justice are recent in the Brazilian context; they have offered new communication tactics between subjects involved in damages as part of their actions to prevent and resolve conflicts in several instances, such as in schools, communities, and in the judiciary. The present study turns to the pilot experience of the program Justice for the 21st Century (Porto Alegre, Brazil), in the context of juvenile criminal justice. The study aims at analyzing the coordinators’ discourses from two Restorative Circles conducted at the 3rd Childhood and Youth Regional Court of Porto Alegre. We have used the theoretical and methodological assumptions of the Bakhtin Circle and scholars in restorative justice as the basis to conduct this study. The discourse analysis methodology that we adopted is based on the following methodological guidelines, that Geraldi developed from the Bakhtin Circle theory: perception of the material dimensions of the sign – in this work, the perception unit focuses on the word; recognition of the word as part of broader contexts; understanding of its meaning in specific contexts; and active-dialogical understanding of the texts. With this research, we observed the recurrence of metaphorical language constructions related to time, more specifically to the future of offenders and victims. We noticed that metaphors are important expressive resources to encourage individuals to interpret their experiences with damage, from the point of view of the future as an upcoming event and not as a repetition of the past.

Keywords: conflict, restorative justice, discourse, metaphor.